The Happiness Diet

The Happiness Diet

The Happiness Diet

The path to happiness could be on your dinner plate. Here are a few "mood food" tips from The Happiness Diet authors Tyler Graham and Drew Ramsey, M.D., that will help you stay healthy, maintain a sharp mind, and keep those pesky blues at bay! Get your own copy of The Happiness Diet here.

Food for Good Mood

When it comes to eating for mood, we want to provide you with foods that don’t shock the system but rather help keep you on an even keel throughout the day. We’ll want to stay away from highly processed foods, because as you know by now, over time these foods send you down a path that leads to bad health and a lack of mental well-being.

Fat plays an important role in brain health. If you want to eat for mood, it’s crucial that you select the fats that are the best for your brain. These are the fats that we find primarily in fish. Also, when we eat whole foods to obtain these nutrients, we get a lot of other vitamins and minerals as a bonus—B-complex vitamins, vitamin D, iodine, and more. All of these nutrients play important roles in keeping you happy throughout the day.

Last but not least, we have to obtain phytochemicals from plants to stay happy. That’s because we depend on these nutrients to prevent damage to our brain cells. We also need these nutrients to protect out DNA from damage from our MAD lifestyles. These plant chemicals work in such complex combinations that the science about why they keep people in good moods is just beginning to be thoroughly studied.

Omega-3s accumulate in nature where high metabolic rates are needed. In fish, that means the need to survive in cold water and travel extreme distances. These are the places in the animal kingdom where—for lack of a better term—miracles happen. And as far as plant life goes, the biggest miracle of all is the act of photosynthesis: the process of converting sunlight into energy, the basis of all life.

In land animals, omega-3s are found most abundantly in the brains of humans. When it comes to incredible feats of endurance, there is no better molecule to rely on than those in the family of shape-shifting, heavy-lifting omega-3s. Prior to migrating thousands of miles, the sandpiper stops at the Bay of Fundy in Canada, where it gorges on shrimp loaded with omega-3s, inducing rapid muscle growth and fueling its flight. The omega-3 DHA is the top fat found in the synaptic connections between our brain cells. These fats are what allow the human heart to contract billions of times over the course of a lifetime without so much as—pun intended—skipping a beat.

You've likely heard that fish is brain food, but you’ve likely not heard how wonderful it is for addressing funky moods. When studies compare the mood disorders in different countries, populations that eat the most fish have the lowest rates of depression, bipolar disorder, postpartum depression, and seasonal affective disorder (the winter blues).

These fats also seem to play a role in aggression. Young boys with lower levels of omega-3s have more temper tantrums and difficulty falling asleep.

Omega-3s have also been studies as a treatment for a variety of brain-based disorders. A 2008 study found fish oil to have equal efficacy to Prozac in the treatment of depression. Eating omega-3s has also been shown to alleviate the symptoms of depression in more than 60 percent of pregnant women.

The same compound that makes tomatoes red, lycopene, helps maintain mood by preventing the formation of pro-inflammatory compounds, like interleukin-6, that are associated with depression. This magical molecule is also known to protect against a vast number of cancers (including breast, prostate, and pancreatic). In a study of elderly nuns, those with the most lycopene in their blood lived on an average a whopping eleven years longer than their sisters with the lowest levels. Organic tomatoes have three times as much of this molecule as conventionally produced ones.

Tomatoes are high in other mood enhancers like folate and magnesium, both used to treat depression. They contain iron, tryptophan, and vitamin B6: the main ingredients needed by your brain to produce important mood-regulating neurotransmitters like serotonin, dopamine, and norepinephrine. Add to this a high concentration of niacin, vitamin K, chromium, vitamin C, and potassium, and it makes sense that tomatoes protect us against choronic diseases like diabetes and heart disease. One way these nutrients work is by lowering homocysteine in the blood, a risk factor for depression, heart attacks, and strokes.

Watermelon, too, is red because of lycopene. Did you know that there are more than 1,200 types of watermelon? One is called the Moon and Stars because it's black skin is littered with white spots, making it look fantastically like a bright starry night sky out in the countryside. While the rind is bitter, it also contains a lot of citrulline, as nutrient that relaxes blood vessels by activating the same mechanism as the impotency drug Viagra. This compound also helps the brain get rid of the metabolic waste product ammonia, which can damage neurons.

The red flesh of watermelon is bursting with the powerful antioxidant lycopene, much more so actually than the tomato. Lycopene protects our skin from the intense summer sun and kills cancer cells. Studies show you can boost the levels of this important nutrient by up to 40 percent (and beta-carotene by 150 percent) by letting it sit outside the refrigerator at room temperature for several days.

These fruits are made spicy by the fat-soluble molecule called capsaicin. This molecule is absorbed by fat. If you add chili powder to oil and vinegar, the fat in the oil absorbs all of the capsaicin. It's why a mouthful of guacamole or milk will cool down a burning mouth, while water or beer is unable to put out the fire.

Neuroscientists recently found that the brain is loaded with receptors for capsaicin, which is currently being investigated for its ability to regulate inflammation by influencing the expression of DNA. We also know that our brains respond to the heat of capsaicin by releasing endorphins, natural compounds that are related to morphine and have a calming effect. Capsaicin destroys carcinogens in our food like dimethyl nitrosamine, a preservative in cured meats, and vinyl carbamate, a cancer-causing agent in many pesticides. And capsaicin has been shown to protect the brain during liver failure.

The heat in peppers is measured on the Scoville scale, and the hotter the pepper, the more of this cancer fighter and pain reducer. A habanero clocks in at 350,000 Scoville units, a jalapeño has 8,000, and the lowly old bell pepper has none at all. It also routinely ends up on the list of the "dirty dozen" of fruits and vegetables compiled by the Environmental Working Group. Capsaicin, like a lot of nutrients in fruit, is a plant's natural defense against pests, and because the bell pepper doesn't contain this spice, the plants are heavily sprayed by growers and are among the most pesticide-contaminated fruits in the grocery store.

But the fact that humans are the only mammals that enjoy the burning sensation of capsaicin is another sign of plants' brilliant design, because we've spread these species to all corners of the earth. The receptor for capsaicin in the human brain has led to a second theory about why we like burning our mouths with this compound. When we eat spicy foods, we release the same endorphins as when we exercise. Just like runners report a post-workout high, chile-eaters talk about a soothing, euphoric response to eating extremely spicy food.

Beets are one of the best sources of the B vitamin folate that is crucial for good mood, memory retrieval, processing speed, and lightning reflexes. Beets are also packed with betaine, which our brain uses to form SAM-e, a natural antidepressant. Uridine, another important nutrient found in these root vegetables, stimulates the production of phosphotidylcholine, a building block of the brain's synaptic connections, helping to increase your mind's processing power. A combination of uridine and omega-3s is as effective as prescription antidepressants in animal studies, and trials of uridine combined with omega-3s are being studied in the treatment of bipolar disorder by Harvard University.

Beets contain another phytonurtient family known as betalains. Two of these compounds, betanin and vulgaxanthin, detoxify the body and reduce inflammation throughout it. Studies on humans have shown that betanins suppress tumor growth through numerous mechanisms, and it's believed that this is mainly done by tamping down enzymes that promote inflammation. As you'll notice, cutting inflammation is something that all the good mood foods have in common.

Garlic is the star of a family of vegetables known as alliums that include onions, garlic, and leeks. Alliums promote healthy arteries and ensure proper blood flow to the brain. These savory vegetables relax your blood vessels, decreasing your blood pressure, which prevents small strokes in the brain, a major cause of depression and dementia later in life.

Alliums are a top source of a key trace mineral for happiness known as chromium. It's needed for a proper response to the hormone insulin, which helps ensure you're not storing too much sugar as fat. But more than that, it influences the uptake of tryptophan, the precursor to the important neurotransmitter serotonin. It also enhances the release of the neurotransmitter norepinephrine. Chromium supplementation is effective in treating some depressed patients who struggle with low energy and carbohydrate craving. The more sugar in your diet, the more chromium your kidneys excrete, making it harder for insulin to function. Alliums lower blood sugar, and while we don't know exactly why, it may have to do with their high chromium content. Not only that, but the new science shows that allicin in garlic breaks up arterial plaques, essentially reversing heart disease. Garlic also thins blood, further protecting us from heart attack and stroke.

However you slice it, by adding garlic, onions, scallions, or any of the alliums to your daily diet, you'll be protecting your brain, lowering your risk of heart disease, and protecting yourself from the most common forms of cancer (especially of the mouth, throat, colon, and breast).